Ascension of the Lion: The Rise of the Republic of South Africa

Soweto, South Africa
June 16, 1976


Another day in South Africa's poverty stricken black townships was usually the same as most. Children went to school, those with jobs went to them, women went to work cleaning their houses. But doay was nothing normal. Not a bit.

At Orlando West Junior School, unbeknownst to most of the teachers, many students and virtually every parent, a protest was growing. sporadic marches and strikes had been going on at Orlando West for a year and a half, usually attacking the demand that black students be taught in Afrikaans, which was seen universally as the "language of the oppressor."

Starting at roughly 6:30 in the morning, thousands of students headed out of their houses, but headed mainly to the Orlando Stadium, which was soon packed. The protest, which was expected to be non-violent, grew to five figures of people, a walking mass which soon began its way out of the area.

Near Orlando High School, the police faced off with them. Armed and nervous, the protesters went on their way, trying to avoid the police. But the police soon blocked their path, right in front of the high school.

The police got nervous as the crowd rolled up to the police patrol. The first few student who started throwing rocks at the police got a very vocal shouting from protest leaders. This massive crowd rolled right up to the police brigade. The police got more nervous still, but the man in charge, a Colonel Kleingold, kept his cool and his men kept theirs.

By eight in the protesters and police were staring and screaming at each other, as they dispersed into groups moving around. By noon, this protest had grown to include virtually all Soweto students, and many who were not in school. This vast crowd protested all over Soweto for a full day, and returned in smaller numbers the next day.

But the shocker was that violence was virtually non-existent. On the second day, a young man who had been injured when he fell off his bicycle was being attended to by a white doctor, Melville Edelstein, while a vast crowd watched. One man volunteered his old truck to carry the young man to a hospital.

The media, which had expected violence witnessed thousands of clearly angry black South Africans not being violent and actually assisting a white doctor stunned many.

But on July 18, things finally got ugly.

Soweto, South Africa
July 18, 1976


A riot team, led by Captain Renaldo van Santel, was ordered to go into Soweto to stop the protests, peaceful as they were. The hope of the authorities was that the students would go back to school peacefully. But that didn't happen, and by now a large portion of the media, who had come to see Henry Kissinger visit South Africa (he was schedule to in August 1976 in OTL, I just moved it up a bit) were now watching Soweto.

The media had been pleasantly surprised by the Soweto protesters. A few were angry enough to talk about violence, but most didn't. The leaders of the group were candid, saying that apartheid was an outlet to oppress black people, but that killing whites was not the solution. Most media got virtually every view they wanted of the squalid slum that was Soweto, and that the blacks were indeed human. Even the hard-right Die Burger newspaper had to admit that the "student uprisers" were being peaceful.

Captain van Santel's team arrived at Orlando High School, and proceeded to arrest Tsietsi Mashininini, one of the group leaders. But the crowd got in the way of the police, saying that Mashininini had done nothing wrong.

The tense situation stayed as it was. The media however was soon called, and by 11 am hundreds of reporters had come to Soweto. The 18-year-old student organizer and his thousands of colleagues had gained a lot of respect among both South African and foreign media. After three hours of arguing, Captain van Santel strode into the crowd, and grabbed Mashininini, attempting to haul him out. The organizer shook off the policeman's grip and backed off.

In full view of hundreds, and to the shock of the assembled media, van Santel pulled out his pistol and shot the student leader in the forehead, at a range of about six feet, killing him instantly. The crowd got a lot angrier and vocal, and all the assembled media expected a shootout to start.

They never got it. The crowd, realizing their leader was dead, did absolutely nothing.

The intelligent ones knew that the media had seen it all. And they mattered more than one dumbass cop.......
 
Very interesting. I assume the broad idea is to give majority-rule South Africa a generational head start. The real history parallel to this is something I need to learn to follow the timeline, but that's not exactly a tragedy, is it?

Please keep writing.
 
Very interesting. I assume the broad idea is to give majority-rule South Africa a generational head start. The real history parallel to this is something I need to learn to follow the timeline, but that's not exactly a tragedy, is it?

Please keep writing.

What I've done there is created a massive scene where the South African government has done something that even most whites will disdain.

"Liberation before Education" was a slogan used by a massive number of South African students during the late 1970s and the 1980s, but it left a huge void of uneducated black Africans, which when combined with whites feeling disenfranchised, has caused the infrastructure problems that exist in OTL South Africa. I'm going to bypass that completely, by having blacks destroy the apartheid system from within, and South Africa being much better for it.
 
Johannesburg, South Africa
July 21, 1976


The news in South Africa was always facing censure form Pretoria, but the death of Tsietsi Mashininini, shot in the head by a jackbooted police colonel, enraged even most white South Africans, who saw the death on television and wondered how a member of the SAP could be so savage.

But for students, it was worse. Most of them had sympathy for the strikers in Soweto, as even though in many cases they did not agree shooting a man in the face for not wanting to learn Afrikaans was unconscionable.

And so, word of a protest spread like wildfire at the traditionally-liberal University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. It was all the school could talk about was that poor kid shot dead by an SAP officer. It hadn't taken long before the students at Wits decided to do something themselves.

On the morning on July 21, that something happened. A massive crowd of university students set out from Wits, bound for Ellis Park stadium, going right through Johannesburg's busy city center. The marchers hadn't gotten very far before more joined them. The black workers who had already started to jam into cheap Joburg flats soon joined them. By the time they reached the city center, the media was watching, and with interest. The students were making their voice heard. Many blacks in the area joined the march, thinking that the SAP would not shoot a crowd that had so many whites in it. Judging by the respect given to them, the blacks were proven right.

Nobody had expected to see such a mass of white students showing solidarity with the black protesters in Soweto. Least of this was the South African government in Pretoria.

Pretoria, South Africa

Prime Miniser Johannes "John" Vorster watched the SABC coverage of the protest with more than a little disdain. How stupid were these students? Did they not know what the blacks would do in power?

Not only that, Vorster saw what he had worked hard for be in danger right before his eyes. He had always been a support of the true people of South Africa - the Afrikaners. God had given them this land, and now they had to defend it from the godless hordes. It was not enough they were getting land of their own, they wanted all of it.

Much of Vorster wanted to call the police chiefs and tell them to stop these idiotic marches, but with the media watching like the obedient Marxist sheep they were, he knew it would look bad to all of the rest of the world. With Kissinger due to arrive soon, he knew that he could not shut these protests down without it getting the world's attention, and he knew enough to not want that.

Lusaka, Zambia

Oliver Tambo had fought for liberation for much of his life, but what he was seeing before him was a thing of beauty. A massive crowd of both whites and blacks protesting apartheid in Johannesburg. He had hoped to see it, and now he was.

How Vorster must hate this, Tambo thought to himself. The racists in Pretoria couldn't claim the ANC provoked this one and try to bomb them again, or try a land attack through their idiotic sheep in Salisbury. He hoped one day he'd meet the brave young man who organized this protest.

His heart felt for Manshininini. They had never met, but a 18 year old student gunned down for organizing protests made Tambo's heart sink. How could a man be so savage and then justify it to God? But then again, Tambo reminded himself, they'd been doing this shit to the people of South Africa for a generation, the racism of Malan and his successors had darkened the land of his birth and tinged it with hatred, fear and anger. The ANC did its absolute best to try and keep this hatred from hurting them, but it was a constant battle. So many of the MK's new recruits justed wanted their AK-47 and a trip home to kill Afrikaners. He knew once Apartheid was history, they'd have to justify all of this to themselves and to God. And that would be more challenging than anything else.
 
South Africa
July-August 1976


Soweto's students had become a rallying cry across the nation. The Soweto example of a peaceful protest, even in the face of police brutality, was a model that worked. The South African Police had several times responded with bullets or police dogs, but in every case local doctors had been very happy to treat the injured or wounded. One more person was killed by police in Bloemfontein, but that one man, Kgosi Mlanthema, had become a martyr himself. His funeral had attracted more than 20,000. "Remember Soweto, Free South Africa!" had become the nation's rallying cry.

The world's media was now paying attention with rapt interest. In Australia and many parts of Western Europe, the news from South Africa made the TV news virtually every day. The United Nations had placed an arms embargo on South Africa - which had already had ocnsequences for the apartheid regime. Three Corvettes ordered by the SA Navy had already been embargoed. They would ultimately end up being sold to Argentina. Protesters in Australia had joined in with the protesters in South Africa, and even the conservative white media could not deny that a rise of anger, among all races, was rising in South Africa.

East London, South Africa
August 10, 1976


Even amongst liberal Western Cape, it was stunning in distant Johannesburg, largely because most in South Africa had figured that one day the blacks and whites would clash. Many whites had grown up expecting that. But something had changed in Soweto.

That something came quite clear in the southern city of East London.

Steve Biko was the leader of the emerging Black Consciousness Movement, which had grown immensely in stature as a result of the Soweto Protests, and he was himself become quite pleased with the results, but sitting across from him was why he was becoming increasingly optimistic about South Africa's future.

Donald Woods was the long-time editor of the East London-based newspaper the Daily Dispatch, which had long been against apartheid, was Biko's guest. The two had become very good friends, even though Woods at first been very critical of the BCM. They were in essence growing a cultural bridge - and both men knew it. Biko knew that the whites were South Africans too, and that any South Africa beyond apartheid would need the whites as a crucial part of it. Woods knew that the whites could not forever hold all of the power.

But what both were coming to see was that their respective movements had to play with each other. The ANC's Freedom Charter existed but it was very clear that Umkhonto We Sizwe was not going to yield easily and be part of a peaceful solution. The National Party didn't even need to be mentioned - Vorster was a jackbooted racist idiot, and so were most of his cabinet members. A few regularly spoke out in parliament against the system of apartheid, but most of the South African Parliament were quite for the system that kept black people down.

But today, the floor belonged to two men, one white, one black, who had little in common besides a great respect and friendship for the other.

And their disdain for apartheid.

Biko had been banned, but to the crowd of more than 20,000 at East London's soccer stadium, they didn't much give a damn. The SA Police clearly didn't either - the police were out in force, but nothing more than angry words had been exchanged, and the media's presence was enough that the police behaved themselves. The memories of Soweto were still very fresh, and the police did not want any more dead bodies.

At five past noon, Biko went to the podium and began his speech.

Three weeks ago, our brothers in Soweto organized their protest to the demand that we all know the language of those who oppress us. That was the first concern, but it was not the only one. All of us want better lives for ourselves, and the Afrikaans degrees are just being done to make us into educated grunts for white bosses. That is how Pretoria thinks - white bosses, black slaves. They think that God made them the people to own South Africa, and all of us to be just the landless peasants.

But I want us all to think back and consider something. Note that I said Pretoria thinks that way. Pretoria is the capital of the oppressors, but not all of our white brothers are like them. We should all be proud to be black and be African, but there is a difference between being proud of who you are and trying to use it to justify ownership or superiority. Claiming superiority because of our skin color and ancestry is bad. After all, how then would we be different than Vorster? How would we be different than the thugs who oppress us?

Our way to victory is to do the opposite of apartheid. Where they divide us, we will unite us. Where they seek to divide us up by race - White, Black, Colored, Indian - we will unite us. We are blacks. But that does not make us any less - or more - than a white man. We have gained the freedom to be ourselves. But for all of us to have our future, we must learn to live with each other. We must take both our friend and theirs, and mix it into such a being that we can all be proud of it, and all be ready to embrace the future that lies ahead of us. Before we can all hold our heads high, we must be ready to allow all of our brothers of different colours to do the same as well.

Freedom can only come when we are all free. We can make that a reality. And if we work hard and be true to ourselves and to God, we will get there.


Woods had been impressed with Biko for much of the time he had known him, but that respect was growing even still. The Black Conscious Movement had long been for little more than black people growing pride and tossing away a superiority complex, but that had ultimately resulted in a growing militancy. Woods knew from experience that nationalism tended to forment a superiority complex - the Afrikaners in the 1930s had themselves been such a case.

But now, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement had himself said that South Africa's future relied on all of its people. He looked out at the dozens of SAP police officers watching the big rally.

I wonder if they understand this, too? Woods asked himself. Very soon, he would find out......
 
Near Knysna, South Africa
August 14, 1976


The order had come from Pretoria, which was no surprise, but in the midst of all of the problems in South Africa now, it was still surprising that the order was as blunt as it was.

Pretoria had ordered Biko's arrest. That would look bad to the media, but Pretoria clearly had seen enough of the protesters having sway over the media. All figured this would be the beginning of a big crackdown on the BCM, which many of the foreign media had figured was coming, too.

But the local SAP Captain had been told secretly that Biko would be killed after his arrest by the SADF. Unfortunately for the Captain, he had talked about that in view of another officer.

That officer, James van den Haas, was one of those who had seen Biko's speech, and it had put him at war with himself. And it had also put him where he was now.

Where he was now was behind the wheel of his Ford patrol car, racing along the coast highways at over a hundred miles an hour, chasing after the white Toyota that he knew Biko owned. He was going to run into a roadblock, which would be his arrest and subsequent killing. James figured that the protests which galvanized the country would turn into riots if Biko died. And he had seen enough blood spilt in the name of apartheid.

He raced along the road, searching for Biko's car. And then he got lucky, a Toyota sedan moving along the highway at legal speeds. He pulled up behind and put his signals on, to pull the car over.

The driver initially seemed to hesitate, But a second later he obliged him and the car pulled over. Sure enough, it was Biko and his wife, and his two children. James steeled himself and told Biko.

"You are Steve Biko?"
"Yes." Biko replied. "Is there a problem?"
"Not from me. But the police are planning to kill you."
Biko at first brushed the assumption. "They don't like anybody who fights apartheid. Of course they want to kill me."
"No, you don't understand. There is a roadblock about ten miles from here. There are several around. They want to stop you, arrest you and then have the officers kill you."

Biko had realized now that this young white man was not at all kidding. "What can you do?"

Crunch time. "Follow me. I know the ways around it, up to Oudtshoorn. That will allow you to get back to East London but dodge all of the roadblocks."
Biko knew full well that if this got out to the SAP leaders, this man was either dead or would be in prison for a long time. He had to trust him, but this police officer had to trust Biko, as well. "I'll follow you."

Eleven miles away, a number of South African police were waiting at a roadblock on the N2, awaiting Biko's arrival.

But he never came, and nobody knew why. They would the next day find out what caused it......
 
One thing that concerns me a little would be that under your sped up timeline you will be missing out on all the constitutional theorising that went on internally in the ANC in the 80s/early 90s, as well as in the wider world as well. The possible implications of that is SA might lose its OTL post Apartheid constitutional stability.

I'm not saying the current constitution is the best possible for SA, but it is the project of a long development process and largely seems to work. You remove this development process and it might be that a post Apartheid state is less politically/constitutonally stable
 
Another thought is that if majority rule comes to SA in the 80s, there will still be the influence of the Soviet Union on the ANC. We might then see an ANC that is openly hostile to liberal democracy and free markets, in contrast to the ANC that we saw in the '90s, which was quite open to these ideas.
 
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